PowerPoint via iChat?

May 19, 2009 5:27 AM

What's the best way to webcast a PowerPoint presentation over iChatAV?

I have to give a talk via webcam to a conference in Asia (from NYC). The options available on their end are iChatAV (or WebEx conferencing, which I'd rather not deal with).

I need to show a PowerPoint presentation that has embedded video and audio files, and because of the nature of the material, I am not willing to send them a copy of the PowerPoint of the AV files to store on their local computer. (My presentation specifically concerns the protection of indigenous cultural property in the digital domain, and my best practices mandate includes not sending digital copies of AV materials that wind up on other peoples' hard drives in pristine condition; yes, someone could record my talk, but a certain lowering of video and audio quality provides the level of protection I need.)

iChat works, over a relatively fast connection, if I share my screen with the other party. I can speak and be heard, while they can see my Powerpoint full screen. But even on a fast connection, it takes 5-10 seconds for each slide to fully resolve, and there's no way that I can figure out to directly route the audio from my PowerPoint into iChat's audio feed, meaning I have to play the audio loud over speakers on my end so that it gets picked up through the microphone, which seems lame-assed.

Is there a piece of software -- for which I am willing to pay -- that allows you to "stream" a PowerPoint, AV media files included, while connected over iCHat, AIM, GoogleChat video, or Yahoo Messenger video?

Webex works much better for sharing the video and slides, but has *no* audio capabilities; one is teleconferenced in over a phone connection. I could hardwire my audio output into the phone, but that seems stupid.

If I convert the PowerPoint to Keynote, does that change any possibilities?

Sorry to get complicated. Webcasting is sort of new to me. I sort of thought it would be more advanced than it is, with bandwidth the major problem even when we're both on high speed university connections.

posted by fourcheesemac to computers & internet (3 comments total)

PS: I am webcasting from a Macbook, OS 10.5.
posted by fourcheesemac at 5:35 AM on May 19

One simple option would be to send them a PowerPoint containing lower-quality versions of the media elements. Otherwise you're always going to be a bit vulnerable to fluctuations in bandwidth and latency when trying to capture and stream live video at a decent resolution/quality.
posted by malevolent at 6:00 AM on May 19

CamTwist is probably what you're looking for, it lets you do screen-casting or even just window-casting. It takes the place of the webcam in the "choose your webcam" selection box of whatever program you're using. Unfortunately, ichat doesn't (or didn't used to, I don't know about newer versions) allow you to change the webcam you're using, but you're cool with using AIM/Yahoo/Google, so that should be no big deal.

As far as audio goes, you want soundflower, which is a virtual audio device that allows you to capture the output of a program or the whole computer and use it as the input, kind of like holding a microphone up to your speakers but via software.
posted by knowles at 6:43 AM on May 19